Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Book Author: Rex Stout

It’s been just over three years since I published a review in the Golden Oldies section of this blog.  My only reason/excuse is that I was kept busy reading so many outstanding current mysteries that I received from publicists, and novels that I read years ago somehow got lost in the shuffle.

But as I was walking in the mystery section of my local library (a shoutout to the Needham, Massachusetts Free Public Library) I saw an old familiar title:  Triple Zeck, A Nero Wolfe Omnibus by Rex Stout.  Stout has always been a favorite author of mine, so much so that I took a course on his writings at Boston College given by his biographer, Professor John J. McAleer.  I had to miss the last class of the semester as I was in the hospital giving birth to my younger son; he celebrates his 53rd birthday next week!

Triple Zeck consists of three full-length novels–And Be A Villain, The Second Confession, and In the Best Families–all of which I had read previously.  That being said, I enjoyed them as much this time.  The books were published individually from 1948 to 1950, and each one is a complete novel on its own.

In case you are not a Wolfe aficionado, a little background is necessary.  Wolfe is an oversized man whose weight varies from an eighth of a ton (250 pounds) to a quarter of a ton (500 pounds), depending on the book.  I’ll split the difference and say he weighed about 375 pounds, hefty by any standard.  That explains, at least in part, why he never (or almost never) leaves his brownstone in Manhattan to physically investigate the cases that are brought to him; Archie Goodwin, his trusted assistant, takes care of that.  Wolfe’s job is simply to sit back in his chair and be a genius.

What connects the three mysteries in this single volume is the fact that in each case Wolfe agrees to investigate a case a client brings to him and then receives a phone call ordering him to drop the case.  In the first phone call, the caller, whom Wolfe identifies as Arnold Zeck, says,”The wisest course for you will be to drop the matter,” which of course Wolfe will not do.

Zeck is the major crime boss in the New York City area and beyond, apparently untouchable, although his many illegal enterprises are known to the city police, the state police, and the FBI.  By the third volume, Wolfe realizes that it’s now a case of Wolfe vs. Zeck and that the only way it can end is with the death of one of them.  So he makes his plan and hopes he will be the survivor.

As is the case with reading the Sherlock Holmes oeuvre, part of the joy of reading Wolfe and Archie’s adventures, in addition to the crime in each novel, is spending time with the two of them.  The similarities with Doyle’s creation are there–Holmes’ pipe, Wolfe’s beer; Inspector Lestrade, Inspector Cramer; Professor Moriarty, Arnold Zeck.  And note that three letters in each protagonist’s name are the same:  Sherlock/Nero, Holmes/Wolfe.  

Coincidence?  I think not.

Rex Stout was a remarkable man.  Encouraged by his father, he had read the Bible twice by the age of four.  At age 13 he was the Kansas state spelling bee champion, and some readers of a certain age will remember a school banking system in which elementary school children brought money to school every week to be deposited in their bank account.  I was one of those children.  That system was invented by Stout.

The first Nero Wolfe novel (Fer-de-Lance) was published in 1934, the final (A Family Affair) in 1975.  Just think about that for a moment–41 years of Nero and Archie!  That is something to celebrate!

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.

Rex Stout, one of the absolute masters of the Golden Age of mysteries, wrote more than fifty mysteries featuring Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. For the uninitiated, Wolfe was the quintessential eccentric detective–middle-aged, hugely overweight, handshake-avoiding, woman-distrusting, and agoraphobic.  Goodwin is his assistant–probably two decades younger, good-looking, a great dancer, and the “legs,” if not the “eyes,” of Wolfe.

The story opens with Wolfe telling Goodwin that while the latter was away on a job, a man named Andrew Hibbard had come to the office to ask Wolfe to protect him from assassination. However, Hibbard refused to give Wolfe the name of the man he was afraid of and insisted that he didn’t want the man arrested or punished, simply stopped.

Hibbard’s story is that there were a group of friends at Harvard more than twenty-five years before who inadvertently injured this man when he also was a student there.  As a result this man had had several operations and now, years later, still walked with a pronounced limp. The group had done whatever they could to help this man, financially and emotionally, for years, but the accident still burdened many of them.  Only recently had this man found his talent, and he was now a successful novelist and playwright.  However, in their guilty state, the men years ago had decided to call themselves The League of Atonement, a name which still stuck.

Recently, while at the Harvard graduation of the son of one of the League members, a group of these men and the injured man had been walking together along ocean cliffs late at night.  The next morning, one of the men was found at the bottom of the cliff.  And two days after that, the remaining members had received a poem which they all agreed came from the crippled man, which said he had killed the League member and was going to kill all the others.

Then, several months later, another member of the group died.  The police declared it suicide, but a follow-up poem allegedly by the injured man and saying that there would be more deaths had prompted Hibbard to come to Wolfe for protection.

Wolfe explained that he could not agree to be a bodyguard but would agree to remove the threat, but Hibbard vetoed this.  The meeting ended.  Then, when Goodwin returns to the office several days after Hibbard and Wolfe’s meeting, he casually mentions an article in the newspaper about a man who had written a book the district attorney wanted declared obscene.  This pricks Wolfe’s memory, and he sends Goodwin out to buy a copy of the book.  After he’s read it, he realizes that the injured man Hibbard was talking about is the book’s author, Paul Chapin.

Wolfe gets in touch with the remaining members of the League of Atonement and promises to remove the Chapin threat for a huge fee, payable only if he succeeds.  The majority of the men agree, although some are still hounded by their guilt and fearful of wronging Chapin again.  And then Chapin himself enters Wolfe’s office.  Talking to Wolfe, “he got into (his voice) a concentrated scorn that would have withered the love of God.”

Stout’s book is a masterful psychological study.  To those who know and love Wolfe and Goodwin, this book is absolutely one of the best in the series.  If you’ve never read Rex Stout, this novel is the perfect one with which to start.

You can read more about Rex Stout at http://www.nerowolfe.org/htm/stout/author.htm.